The Man From Beijing (33 page)

‘I don’t know. I’m tired. My throat hurts.’

‘We have examined you carefully. You survived that unfortunate incident without serious injury.’

‘Why am I here? I want to go back to my hotel.’

The doctor bent down closer to her face.

‘The police need to talk to you first. We don’t like it when foreign visitors are treated badly in our country. We are ashamed. Whoever attacked you must be found.’

‘But I didn’t see anything.’

‘I’m not the one you need to talk to.’

The doctor stood up and nodded to the two men in uniform, who carried their chairs over to her bed and sat down. One of them, the interpreter, was young, but the man asking the questions was in his sixties. He had tinted glasses, which meant that she couldn’t see his eyes. He started asking questions without either of the men having introduced themselves. She had the vague impression that the elderly man didn’t like her at all.

‘We need to know what you saw.’

‘I didn’t see anything. It all happened so quickly.’

‘All the witnesses have agreed that the two men were not masked.’

‘I didn’t even know there were two of them.’

‘What did register with you?’

‘I felt an arm around my neck. They attacked me from behind. They snatched my bag and punched me in the stomach.’

‘We need to know everything you can tell us about these two men.’

‘But I didn’t see anything.’

‘No faces?’

‘No.’

‘Did you hear their voices?’

‘I didn’t even know they said anything.’

‘What happened just before you were attacked?’

‘A man cut my silhouette. I’d paid him and was about to leave.’

‘When your silhouette had been cut – did you see anything then?’

‘Such as?’

‘Anybody waiting?’

‘How many times do I have to tell you that I didn’t see anything at all?’

When the interpreter had translated her answer the police officer leaned towards her and raised his voice.

‘We are asking these questions because we want to catch the men who attacked you and stole your bag. That’s why you should answer without losing your temper.’

The words cut her. ‘I’m just telling you the way it was.’

‘What did you have in your bag?’

‘Some cash, not a lot, Chinese, and some American dollars. A comb, a handkerchief, some pills, a pen, nothing important.’

‘We found your passport in an inside pocket of your jacket. I gather you are Swedish. Why are you here in China?’

‘I came here on holiday, with a friend.’

The elderly man thought that over. His face was expressionless.

‘We didn’t find a silhouette,’ he said eventually.

‘It was in my bag.’

‘You didn’t say that when I asked you. Is there anything else you’ve forgotten?’

She thought for a moment, then shook her head. The interrogation was over. The elderly police officer said something, then left the room.

‘When you feel better we’ll take you back to your hotel. We’ll come back to you later and ask a few more questions for the records.’

The interpreter mentioned the name of her hotel without her having said it.

‘How do you know the name of the hotel I’m staying at? The key was in my bag.’

‘We know things like that.’

He bowed and left the room. Before the door closed, the doctor with the American accent came back into the room.

‘We need you for a few more minutes,’ he said. ‘Some blood tests, an assessment of your X-rays.’

My watch, she thought. They didn’t take that. She checked it. A quarter to five.

‘When can I go back to my hotel?’

‘Soon.’

‘My friend will be very worried if I’m not there.’

‘We’ll arrange transport back to your hotel. We’re very keen to make sure that our foreign guests are not disappointed by our hospitality, despite the fact that unfortunate incidents do occasionally take place.’

She was left alone in the room. Somewhere in the distance she heard somebody screaming, a lonely cry echoing down the corridor.

She chewed over what had happened. The whole episode seemed surreal – the sudden shock at having been grabbed from behind, the punch in the stomach and the people who had helped her.

But they must have seen something, she thought. Have the police asked them? Were they still there when the ambulance arrived? Or did the police get there first?

She had never been attacked before in her life. She had been threatened, but never physically assaulted. This was the first time she was the victim.

She felt afraid but knew this was usual after a person had been attacked. Fear, but also anger, a feeling of having been humiliated, distress. And a lust for revenge. Just now, lying in bed, she would not have protested if the two men who had mugged her had been forced to kneel down and shot through the back of the head.

A nurse came into the room and helped her to dress. She had a pain in her stomach and a graze on her knee. When the nurse gave her a comb and held up a mirror in front of her, she could see that she was very pale. So this is what I look like when I’m scared, she thought. I won’t forget it.

The doctor returned as she sat on the bed, ready to go back to her hotel.

‘The pain in your neck will pass, probably as soon as tomorrow,’ he said.

‘Thank you for all you’ve done for me.’

Three police officers were standing in the corridor, waiting for her. One of them was carrying a frightening-looking automatic weapon. They accompanied her down in the lift and stepped into a police car. She had no idea where she was, didn’t even know the name of the hospital where she had been treated. At one point she thought she might have recognised one side of the Forbidden City, but wasn’t sure.

The sirens had been switched off. She was grateful not to have to return to her hotel in a car with flashing blue lights. She recognised the hotel entrance and got out of the car, which moved away even before she had time to turn round. She was still wondering how they could have known where she was staying.

She explained at the front desk that she had lost her key and was given another without question. It happened so quickly that she realised it must have been prepared in advance. The woman behind the counter smiled. She knows, Birgitta thought. The police have been here, told the staff about the assault and prepared them for her return with no key.

As she walked towards the lifts, she thought she should be grateful, but instead she felt uneasy. That feeling was not banished when she entered her room. She could see that somebody had been there. But the maid had come earlier in the day. It was possible of course that Karin had stopped in briefly, to pick up something or to change clothes. But what was there to prevent the police from making a discreet search? Or somebody else, for that matter?

What betrayed the unknown visitor was the plastic carrier bag with the board games. She saw immediately that it wasn’t where she had left it. She looked around the room, slowly, so that nothing would escape her notice. But it was only the bag that had been moved and not put back.

She went to the bathroom. Her toiletries bag was exactly where she had left it that morning. None of the contents were missing.

She went back into the room and sat on a chair by the window. Her suitcase was lying with the lid open. She went to examine the contents, lifting out each item of clothing, one by one. If somebody had searched through it, they had done it carefully to avoid detection.

It was only when she came to the bottom of the case that she stopped dead. There ought to be a torch and a box of matches there. She always took them with her on her travels, ever since the year before she married Staffan when she had visited Madeira and there had been a power cut that lasted for more than a day. She had been out for an evening walk by the steep cliffs on the outskirts of Funchal when everything went black. It had taken her hours to grope her way back to the hotel. After that she always carried a torch and a box of matches in her suitcase. The torch was there, but no sign of the matches. The matchbox had a green label and came from a restaurant in Helsingborg.

She went through the clothes once more without finding the box. Had she put it in her bag? She did sometimes do that, but she had no memory of moving it from her suitcase. But who would take a box of matches from a room being searched surreptitiously?

She sat down on the chair by the window again. That last hour in the hospital, she thought. Even at the time I had the feeling that I was being kept there unnecessarily. What were the test results they were waiting for? Was the real reason that they wanted me out of the way while the police searched my hotel room? But why? After all, I was the one who had been mugged.

There was a knock on the door. Birgitta gave a start. She could see through the peephole that there were police officers in the corridor. She opened the door anxiously. These were new officers, not the ones she had seen at the hospital. One was a woman, short, about the same age as Birgitta. She was the one who did the talking.

‘We just want to make sure that everything is all right.’

‘Thank you.’

The policewoman indicated that she wanted to enter the room. Birgitta stepped to one side. One policeman stood outside the door, another one inside. The woman led the way to the chairs by the window and placed a briefcase on the table. Something about her behaviour surprised Birgitta Roslin, without her being able to put her finger on what it was.

‘I’d like you to study some pictures. We have information from some witnesses and think we might know who carried out the attack.’

‘But I didn’t see anything. An arm, perhaps? How can I identify an arm?’

The police officer wasn’t listening. She produced some photographs and placed them on the table in front of Birgitta Roslin. All of them were of young men.

‘Perhaps you saw something without having registered it.’

There was obviously no point in protesting. Birgitta leafed through the pictures, and it occurred to her that these were young men who might eventually commit a crime that would result in their being executed. Naturally, she didn’t recognise any of them. She shook her head.

‘I’ve never seen any of them before.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Certain.’

‘None of them?’

‘None.’

The policewoman replaced the photographs in the briefcase. Birgitta noticed that her fingernails were badly bitten.

‘We shall catch the people responsible for the attack,’ said the woman. ‘How much longer will you be staying in Beijing?’

‘Three days.’

The officer nodded, bowed and left the room.

You knew that, Birgitta thought as she fastened the safety chain. That I would be staying for three more days. Why ask me something you knew already? You can’t fool me as easily as that.

She closed her eyes and thought that she should call home.

When she woke up it was dark outside. The pain in her neck was beginning to subside. But the attack seemed even more menacing now. She had a strange feeling that the worst hadn’t actually happened yet. She took out her mobile phone and called Helsingborg. Staffan wasn’t at home, nor did he answer his mobile phone. She left a message, considered calling her children, but decided not to.

She went through the contents of her bag in her head one more time. She had lost sixty dollars. But most of her cash was locked up in the little safe in the wardrobe. She stood up and went to check the safe. It was still locked. She keyed in the code and went through the contents. Nothing was missing. She closed the door and relocked it. She was still trying to work out what had struck her as odd about the policewoman’s behaviour. She stood by the door and tried to call up the scene in her mind’s eye. But in vain. She lay down on the bed again. Thought again about the photographs the policewoman had taken out of her briefcase.

She suddenly sat up.
She had opened the door. The policewoman had indicated that she wanted to come in and Birgitta had moved to one side. Then the woman had walked straight over to the chairs by the window. She hadn’t even cast a glance at the open bathroom door, or the part of the room with the large double bed.

Birgitta Roslin could think of only one explanation. The policewoman had been in the room before. She didn’t need to look around. She already knew where everything was.

Birgitta stared at the table where the briefcase and the photographs had been lying. She hadn’t recognised any of the faces she had been asked to study. But was that perhaps really what the police wanted to check? That she couldn’t identify anybody in the pictures? It was not a question of her possibly being able to recognise one of her attackers. On the contrary. The police wanted to make sure that she really hadn’t seen anything.

But why? She stood by the window. A thought she had entertained while still in Hudiksvall came back into her mind.

Fear flooded her before she had time to prepare herself. It was more than an hour before she could pluck up the courage to take the lift to the dining room.

Before she went in through the glass doors, she looked around. But there was nobody there.

24

Birgitta Roslin had been crying in her sleep. Karin Wiman sat up in bed and gently touched her shoulder in order to wake her up.

Karin had come back very late that evening. To make sure that she didn’t lie awake for hours, Birgitta had taken one of the sleeping pills she so seldom used but always had with her.

‘You must have been dreaming,’ said Karin. ‘Something sad that made you cry.’

Birgitta couldn’t remember any dreams. The inner landscape she had just left was completely empty.

‘What time is it?’